


Subjective Time

by Trobadora



Series: Mercury [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s02e04 Meat, Gen, M/M, birthday fic, fluff (mostly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1216654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All that time travelling, do you even know how old you are? No, you don't, but I do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subjective Time

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after _Meat_ in Jack's timeline.

Blue light streamed out of the small metal box in Jack's hand, strobing over his face, beaming into his eyes without blinding.

He'd found the strange box on his desk when he finally shut off the CCTV feed. Gwen and Rhys had long left, and Gwen wouldn't retcon Rhys, and she was right, damn it, Jack wouldn't retcon _her_. So there was nothing to be done; nothing but try and protect her and the hostages she'd given to fortune as best he could.

When he'd seen the box on his desk - where it definitely hadn't been a few hours earlier - Jack had almost called for Tosh to scan for intruders, but then he'd noticed the small circular glyph etched into the metal at the centre of each of the little cube's sides.

Gallifreyan script, if he was any judge. Not that he could read it, but he'd seen enough samples in his time on the TARDIS to recognise it on sight, even after all these years. He'd even had a fairly recent refresher, fixing the TARDIS after the Master had turned her into a Paradox Machine.

The Doctor must have been here, must have left this. Why? 

Jack had picked the cube up from his desk, a combination of elation, anger, and tiredness washing over him - a by now familiar reaction to the Doctor's visits. It was a circular trap of conflicting emotion, and Jack was too tired to even try escape its inevitability just now. _Damn you, Doctor_ , he'd thought affectionately, scowled a little at the box in his palm, and absent-mindedly brushed his thumb over it. And then the box had opened, an almost organic shift, and blue light had started scanning his face.

"Jack?" Ianto's voice was tight. He was standing in the door, looking at Jack and the little box with worry on his face.

"Leave it," Jack snapped, then calmed himself into a smile with an effort. "You don't need to watch, Ianto. Don't worry about it, it's perfectly safe." Nothing about the Doctor was safe, but that was for Jack to deal with in his own way. Not that he particularly felt like dealing with whatever the Doctor thought he was doing, not now. Sometimes, he thought bitterly, it really would be easier if the Doctor would just stay away.

Jack's heart clenched at the thought. The Doctor knew, of course. It was why he did stay away, in general, and why it meant so much that he kept coming back now. 

In the corner of his eye, he could see Ianto lingering in the doorway for another moment, then shrugging and leaving. (He'd be back. He'd be back, too, thank God.)

The blue scanner light extinguished, and a hologram began to form in front of Jack - the Doctor's face, with a wide, aren't-I-amazing grin lighting up his expression. No dark shadows around his eyes now. Jack was glad to see it, even if it did throw his own moodiness into relief.

"Hello, Jack!" The projection of the Doctor's head moved a little, probably because he was bouncing on his feet or fidgeting - he'd never been good at holding still.

A holomessage, Jack thought dumbly. Worry pooled in his belly; what could make the Doctor send him such a thing? Eyes only, too, literally - an image projected directly onto the retina. And the sound probably went straight to his auditory nerves.

"I was on Rivatella the other day - great place, Rivatella!" the Doctor said, all enthusiasm and self-absorption and that infectious urge to share his joy. "I came across this farmer's market, and ... oh, you haven't forgotten Taltaltintadiricovv, have you? You stuffed your face with those little shellberry pastries - remember that day? Rose was staring a bit, she was, and you just looked at her with that deadpan expression, and you said, 'Well, I work off a lot of energy, don't I?' That was a good day." A wide grin, turning wistful toward the end. "It was, wasn't it? One of the best."

It had been. And this sounded too much like the lead-up to a good-bye. Jack cursed at himself. What had he been thinking? It was never easy with the Doctor, not for either of them, and often nothing short of harrowing, and Jack had never regretted a single moment. The Doctor hadn't known how true it was when he'd claimed, a long time ago, to be hard work but worth it. (Then again, perhaps he had.)

"Anyway, Rivatella!" the hologram continued. "Came across a farmer's market, crates and crates of fresh shellberries, and there were food stands too, and pastries, and, well, here we are." With that non-explanation the Doctor fell silent and lowered his eyes a little. Then his index finger came into view, poking at the side of his nose.

A zapping sound, and on the desk, a large, sloppily wrapped package tied together with twine flashed into being. Jack blinked. That had been a transmat effect. At the very least, there had to be a buffer inside the box, and a rematerialisation unit. Miniaturised - dimensionally transcendental, probably, if it was Time Lord tech, though Jack could think of at least four other devices that could have achieved the effect ...

He shook off the thought; time to geek out over the tech later. The Doctor had sent him a parcel, and if that wasn't the weirdest sequence of words he'd ever thought in one string, it certainly came close.

In front of him, the holographic image of the Doctor was still beaming. "Go on, unwrap it," he said, and this time the movement of his head must have come from the little get-on-with-it gestures he was no doubt making. "I hope you still like shellberry pastries."

Jack didn't reach for the parcel; he was too busy trying to wrap his mind around the words he'd just heard. 

"So, what's the occasion, you ask? Well! Glad you asked, Jack." 

There was something about the way the Doctor - this Doctor - said Jack's name, something that hadn't quite been there before. Something intimate, as if he were rolling the name around on his tongue, pleased with the taste of it, the harshness of the "k" signalling too soon an end to an experience that should be drawn out. 

"You see, your timeline - it's such a convoluted thing," the Doctor expounded. "All that time travelling, do you even know how old you are? No, you don't, but I do." More beaming, the Doctor's cheeks rounding with it. "Now I do, anyway. Had to work it all out from basic principles, follow your timeline, subjective time and everything - blimey, you do get around! All those loops and circles, and pocket dimensions, and rewound timelines, it wasn't easy to figure out. But I'm me and I'm brilliant, so of course I did!" More movement, and Jack's imagination provided the Doctor waving his arms, gesturing a flourish of an introduction to the - no doubt - Doctorish brilliance to come. "As of today, right now, the moment you're listening to this, you're exactly 203 subjective years old."

The strangest thing was, he seemed actually happy having arrived at that conclusion - and not just taken with his own cleverness, but genuinely pleased. As if Jack's age didn't lead straight back to the cause of it. As if he hadn't called it wrong before, hadn't been so uncomfortable with it, hadn't, later, treated it as an unhappy truth best ignored. Jack swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. 

"Many happy returns, Jack. - Well, the many returns are sort of a given, really, but happy counts for something, right?" Another sudden, wide grin reminiscent of the first Doctor Jack had known. "Enjoy the pastries." 

And the hologram vanished, leaving Jack blinking, trying to adjust his vision, trying to alleviate the burning behind his eyes.

He looked down at the parcel on his desk, and busied his fingers untying the twine, ripping away the brown wrapping paper. Inside, there were pastries all right. One of them was perhaps as large as Jack's palm, and they were stacked tightly into a crate stamped - in Rivatellan Alanese - with the name and comm number of what must be a Rivatellan farm, though the name was clearly Taltaltintadiricovv in origin.

Jack automatically snagged one of them, biting off half of it. Fluffy pastry, sweet sugary berry shells, and tart pulp burst onto his tongue like a step through the Time Vortex to that day on Taltaltintadiricovv, all those years ago. 

A second bite, and it was gone. Jack's hand clenched tightly around the cube in his hand, and he laughed, helplessly, expelling a tension that had lodged in his chest for too long. With his free hand he reached for another pastry, stuffing it into his mouth whole, like swallowing joy.


End file.
